The U.S. credit card industry, harshly criticized for imposing surprise fees and interest rate hikes on consumers, may face a day of reckoning on Thursday.

The Federal Reserve is to vote on credit card reforms that may bring some relief to customers who face a variety of ways for being hit with late fees, universal defaults, shorter payment periods and confusing payment allocations for different balances.

Credit card users likely also would see easier-to-read tables in their monthly statements as a result of the changes.

The new rules, which were proposed earlier this year, are expected to total some 1,000 pages. They need approval of the Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration, which all are expected to act on Thursday.

It's definitely high time someone held these massive conglomerate loan sharks to some sort of accountability.

I read that one popular practice is to extend a line of credit for $500 to almost ANYONE and they applied an immediate $200 fee applied to the card at an incredibly high interest rate. Crap like that needs to stop.